The Heartwood Crown

by Matt Mikalatos

  The king laughed. “Not at all, young man. But it is a diverting entertainment to spend some time with you, and I have hopes you will join my people here. You are well known as a warrior, but the way you twisted the connection of Elenil and Scim magic to create the Black Skulls shows an innovation I respect.”

  Darius thought of his skull mask, in the hands of the Elenil even now. It made him furious to think of them possessing the source of his invulnerability in war, and rather than making him feel nervous or vulnerable, it gave him a burning commitment to take it back and punish them for every way they had crossed him. “Majesty, if you go to war with the Elenil, I hope you will allow me to be among your fighters.”

  “It is not a matter of if but when. A separate question is whether to ally with Hanali and his Scim rebels.” The king regarded Darius as they walked. “I am interested in the prophecy Hanali has shared with me.”

  “The one about the human who will kill the archon with the Sword of Years?”

  “Yes. He thinks it is you.”

  “It makes sense,” Darius said. “I want to kill him. My sword wants to kill him.”

  “I do not think you truly wish to kill him,” King Ian said. “It seems to me that you wish you had the desire to kill him, but you are not so bloodthirsty as it would appear.”

  Darius frowned. The king was not completely wrong, but it stung to hear the words spoken aloud. Darius felt he should be used to this, the world conspiring to give him an ever-shrinking series of choices. Every solution to his problems threatened to make him someone he personally disliked. He could kill the archon, solve his problems through violence. He didn’t care for that solution, not really. But the other choice was to do nothing, to abandon the Sunlit Lands, to go back to high school and leave the Scim in their current situation. That was the act of a coward, and it left people he cared about in danger.

  These weren’t new choices either. It happened in small things too. He remembered being in a math class and his teacher asking him who had done his homework for him. Not because he was a jock or because he was a guy. And he knew because when he finally convinced the teacher he had done it himself, the teacher had said, “That’s impressive for someone like you.” Someone like me. Of course Darius knew exactly what that meant. He meant most Black people are stupid and Darius had exceeded his expectations. So what could Darius do? Get angry, yell at his teacher? Report it, which would involve trying to explain to the principal why exactly that precise comment was racist (“It was a compliment, stop overreacting!”)? Or swallow the insult, try to ignore it. And if he swallowed this insult, he would have to swallow another and another, and if he stood up to the man, he would have to do it again and again, and no matter what Darius chose, he was either the “angry Black man” or the subjugated, harmless, invisible kind. And he hated, more than all of that, the fact that he kept being surprised by it. That he felt so helpless, so overwhelmed by it, so certain there wasn’t a way out. It reminded him of the shackles on his wrists. He could twist them and fight them or ignore them or hide them or stuff padding beneath them, but the shackles were still there, and he kept being told the only person who could take them off was his enemy. He could release his rage or swallow it, but either way the rage shook him, filled him, made his skin feel tight with the anger—at himself, at the system, at the injustice of the world.

  And the choices kept getting smaller. The space of his freedom kept shrinking. And there was this feeling that once he chose a path, someone would block the other, making sure his choices boiled away to nothing. It was hard to explain, even to himself. It was like the world itself made him claustrophobic. The sky was falling, and he couldn’t hold it up, and all the people walked around him, acting like he was a fool, telling him to stand up straight and take it. Telling him it was his choice to make and stop complaining.

  And whichever choice he made, he would have to make it a hundred more times when the clerk at the store followed him for no reason, when his friends assumed he loved rap, when someone asked him where they could buy drugs. Even playing sports didn’t feel like the release it should be because there was always someone who saw him as the beast, the machine, the “naturally stronger Black body.” There were always people assuming sports was his “only way out of the hood” when they knew nothing about him, had never seen his home, didn’t know his family.

  Which was part of what he loved about being with Madeline. She loved him as a person. She loved Darius Walker, the man. Loved his story, his culture, wanted to get to know his world and his interests. He wanted to know hers, too. It was a relief to lie beside her in the grass and read fantasy novels out loud to each other. He liked listening to her bubblegum pop music and laughing at her when she sang along. And sure, okay, there were times when racism intersected with their relationship—he still remembered the “prom speech” from her dad, which seemed to be designed to say that he knew that Black kids were super sexual (“Not with my daughter”)—but even then Darius didn’t have to go through the complicated calculus of whether to be mad, because Madeline got mad, and Darius could take the role of the reasonable one calming her down. It’s not that big a deal, Mads. I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way. And for once he could be the magnanimous, forgiving type, not the angry man and not the guy who would let himself be walked on.

  And Madeline backed him up. When he was angry, she told him, “You’re right to be mad.” When he was scared to speak up, she told him, “Maybe it’s wise to keep quiet just this once.” She didn’t think he was a terrible person, and she didn’t let his responses in those moments define him. He had asked her about it once, and she told him about how she had been in a car accident when she was learning to drive. Her mom had been with her, and Madeline had a sort of nervous breakdown. She couldn’t get out of the car. Her hands were shaking so bad she could barely get her learner’s permit out. Afterward she had told her mom, “I’m sorry I’m such a wimp.” Her mom had said to her, “Madeline, you are one of the bravest people I know. You were in a car accident, and you were scared for a few minutes. That’s not who you are—that’s something that happened to you.” Darius didn’t understand what this meant for him at first, until Madeline had kissed him and said, “Dealing with racism is like being in a car accident every day. It’s not who you are, it’s something that keeps happening to you.” Darius wasn’t sure he agreed with her, but the kindness, the generosity of that thought stuck with him.

  So when it came to the question of whether to kill the archon or not, Darius felt like there was no good solution. Either way he became someone he did not want to be. But he couldn’t deny that when the Sword of Years was in his hand, his desire to kill Archon Thenody and the Elenil who were like him only increased. “Perhaps you will be the one to fulfill the prophecy, Majesty. Maybe you will take my sword and use it to kill the archon.”

  The king paused, thinking about this. “No, dear friend, for the words of the Elenil prophets are clear. They say a human will kill him, and I am a Pastisian, born and reared in the Sunlit Lands.”

  “But you’re human,” Darius said.

  “We reserve that term for those who were born on Earth,” King Ian said. “People like yourself, or even those who were brought here as children. Many in my city were born here. I am third generation Pastisian myself, grandson of one of the founding members of this city. It is not I who will kill the archon.”

  As they neared the center of the city, the Place of Knowledge came into view. It had the look of a squat temple, built in the style of a ziggurat, and Darius had the unpleasant sensation that it crouched among the other buildings like a spider, its legs bent in preparation to leap upon its prey. The Place of Knowledge itself was encrusted with sculptures of skulls and skeletons, many of them dressed in hooded robes and nearly all of them going about their everyday life: shopping in the market, sitting at a desk writing by candlelight, embracing one another. It was a terrifying building, full of ominous portent.

  “Do not let fea
r fill your heart,” the king said, “for this is a place all must come to in time, even the Elenil. It is a place of truth. No illusion can survive here for long.”

  The king led him up the bone-white stairs. The doors yawned open as they approached, and they entered a small chamber with thick red carpets and white walls. The door closed behind them. A closet opened in the side of the wall. King Ian took off his gloves, then his mask. He removed his robe and hung it in the closet. His hair was close cropped and silver on the sides but black and full on top. His eyes were nearly as black as his robes had been, his skin smooth and black as midnight. The wrinkles around his eyes gave him a look of rested kindness, as if he were someone who laughed often, though Darius had seen precious little evidence of this.

  “You may leave your sword here too,” the king said, but the way he said it made it clear it was the wish of the sovereign monarch, not a simple invitation. When Darius hesitated, Ian said, “It clouds your truth with its own desires. You may take it up again when we leave here, if you wish.”

  Darius set his sword beside the king’s mask. Masks and weapons. So much of his time in the Sunlit Lands came to this. Hiding his identity and visiting violence on the unjust. Strangely, he found that in the anonymity of the mask he had fewer questions about what his response to injustice should be. Putting on the mask of the Black Skull was a declaration of war. He would not shrink back, he would not apologize, he would not wait for justice to come—he would take it. Back home he had taken abuse, insults, hateful comments, all so he could go about his life without interruption. But here no one commented on him being Black, because here it was all about humans and Elenil and Scim and so on. If they hated him here, it was because he was a human being or because he had chosen to champion the Scim. Which wasn’t much better, honestly, but at least it was a change of pace. He had to admit it was a relief to have someone else to champion. He was tired of standing up for himself.

  “It is hard to lay it down,” King Ian said. “Harder still to leave it.”

  It took Darius a moment to realize the king was talking about the sword. He was right—Darius was nervous to enter this necromancer’s temple without it. Who knew what they might try to make him do? “I won’t speak to the dead,” Darius said. “It seems wrong to me.”

  Ian laughed and clapped him on the back. “Perhaps you will listen to the dead then.” He pushed open a door, and they stepped through.

  It was the largest library Darius had ever seen. Every surface was jammed with shelves which were weighted with books and scrolls and maps and folios and papers. Darius spun around, taking in the entire place. “These are magic books? Dark magic? Necromancy?”

  King Ian laughed, pure joy bursting from him. “The look on your face, Darius! No, I doubt you would describe them as such, being a necromancer yourself.”

  “I don’t understand.” Darius picked up a book. A copy of Aristotle’s Poetics.

  The king took it from him, beaming, and turned it over in his hands. “My old friend Aristotle. ‘The essence of a riddle is to express true facts under impossible combinations.’ He died in 322 BC, thousands of years ago. And yet, here, he still speaks. I have had long dialogues with him in my mind, have fought his great philosophical intellect, have wrestled to find holes in his logic, have debated and raged against him, and still he speaks, implacable, unchanged. Yes, I speak to the dead. And they speak to me, and their wisdom—which might otherwise be lost to the world—takes root in my own life.”

  “Your necromancy—the thing that terrifies the rest of the Sunlit Lands—is that you can read?” So they didn’t speak to the dead here, not really. Darius was stunned. Stunned and confused. How were the rest of the Sunlit Lands terrified of the Pastisians just because they could read?

  Ian ascended a wide stairway, browsing the books. There must have been thousands of them. “Think of it, Darius. The Elenil are illiterate. The Scim, the Maegrom, the Aluvoreans, the Kakri, the Southern Court, the Zhanin—all of them are unable to read. To them this is a sort of magic, an inexplicable way to preserve knowledge, to communicate. You and I can know the words of a person who lived thousands of years ago. I can send a message to you that is indecipherable to a Scim, that is nonsense to an Elenil. Time and distance are no barrier to us. The others pass down their stories, elder to child, mother to daughter, grandfather to son. You and I overhear such stories once and take them as our own, free to all who have our peculiar skill.” He held up a book, showed Darius the title. It was hand-bound in leather, the title scored into the cover: Stories and Legends of the Elenil.

  “You’re not necromancers. You’re literate.” Darius shook his head. He picked up another book, put it back on the shelf. “The entire world is afraid of you because you know how to read.”

  “It’s a technology, Darius, and one that gives us vast advantages. In this place, this temple of knowledge, we keep only books from those who have already left us. It is truly where we hear the words of the dead. The words of the living we keep elsewhere in the city. Those are people we can still speak to, should we wish, and should we find the time and space to do so. But here . . . here we find our lost humanity.” He led Darius to a wide room with smaller books, like journals. “Here we keep the reflections of the Pastisians, those who have lived in the Sunlit Lands. Here are my father’s poems. There my grandmother’s war journals. My brother’s letters to his children.”

  Darius looked at the books, amazed at their collection. “Some of these must be unique. One of a kind.”

  “Nearly all of them,” Ian said. He picked up a tiny book, about twice the size of a wallet. “A new arrival, written by one of my long-term spies in the Court of Far Seeing.”

  The cover of this one was paper, and the words were written in a confident, flowing hand. The Words and Acts of Vivi, Son of Gelintel. “Hanali’s father?”

  “Yes, kept here in this room because it was written by a Pastisian. But it is a work about Vivi. We collect the words of influential people, usually without their knowledge. There are words in this book that Hanali has not heard, I am certain. If you choose to take it, there will be some advantages for you in that relationship, I think. Though he is dead, Vivi can give you insights into his son.”

  Darius’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “Take it? Shouldn’t it stay here for others who need to read it?”

  “Vivi has shared his words with me already. The loss of this book would be a significant one, but the potential benefit is more significant. I wish for you to take it and read it, and, should you choose, read it to Hanali as well.”

  “I can’t take this,” Darius said. “You can just tell me what it says.”

  Ian put his hand on Darius’s shoulder. “My words and his may say different things, son.” Usually Darius didn’t like being called son by anyone but his father, but this time he didn’t flinch. He was not offended. He was honored that Ian would speak to him like that. “Now,” the king said. “Let me show you one more book before we leave this place. Let me introduce you to a man long dead who is held in great reverence by me and all Pastisians.”

  They did not have to leave the room. It was a Pastisian, then. Or so Darius thought. The book lay open on a stand. It was old, the pages yellow leaning toward brown, and brittle. “These are the words of Nikolas Pastis.”

  “The founder of Pastisia?”

  “In a sense. He was a man who lived on Earth centuries ago. Greek by heritage, but he lived in the United States in the 1700s. He had a plantation, and he owned many slaves.”

  Darius’s stomach clenched. How could Ian say a slave owner had been a great man? And why would they name this place after him?

  Ian flipped through the pages with gentle reverence, moving toward the beginning of the book. “Listen to his words, Darius. He writes, ‘I have come to an inescapable conclusion, though the Good Lord knows I have fought to escape it, like a man in a prison informed of his impending execution. I have paced out the limits of this cell, have raged against the bar
s, have cried and wept for release but discovered no relief. I cannot say these men I have enslaved are less than I. They watch over their children with the same tender care. Their prayers are as impassioned, the depth of their affection for their wives as touched by heaven as my own. I am no more their superior than I am inferior to a Frenchman. For are not the Greeks, despite our swarthy skin, the originators of all that is good in art and culture, which the European claims for his own? So I have freed them all, every one, though it shall be my ruin and I a pauper. For I am convinced of this: a great harm to me means little if it shall create a greater benefit to many others.’”

  “He set his slaves free,” Darius said.

  “Yes. And six of them—my own ancestors among them—found their way to the Sunlit Lands. They made this place, and they named it for their old master. It is said they invited him to come with them, saying, ‘Master, come with us to a place of safety for those who have been wronged. It is called the Sunlit Lands.’ He wept and said, ‘Call me not your master, for I shall forevermore be your servant. Who am I to accept your generous offer?’ He would not go with them but remained on his land, which became a place of refuge for runaways and freed slaves . . . indeed, it is said he made a sort of Sunlit Lands upon the Earth for a time, and he was well regarded by victims of injustice.”

  Darius crossed his arms. “So he gave up his slaves. That’s nothing more than what he should have done.”

  Ian put his hands on Darius’s shoulders. “Do not underestimate the nobility of doing only what should be done. It is more than most accomplish in their lives.” He closed the book. “He was a good man, by the end.” He pressed the tiny book of Vivi’s words into Darius’s hand. “Will you hear the words of the man you killed?”